the way the teaser was cut it implied that mandy's rings are controlling the helicopters that attack stark's mansion.

it'd be a realistic enough compromise if mandarin's rings did have more than just an aesthetic function, but were not actually magic.

Yep. Looks like each ring is going to control a certain weaponry...although I'm hoping it has another catch to it besides that.

Anyway, an updated prediction of the timeline of events based on what we definitively know about the film and some reliable rumors, new and old.

-Film starts out with Tony paranoid after what happened in The Avengers which leads to him wanting the armor to be with him at all times
-As a result of this he gets the Extremis surgery at AIM so he can control his armor with his mind
-Meanwhile Aldrich sales his and Maya Hansen's idea, the Extremis virus, to The Mandarin, who is planning to shock the world and prove heroes don't exist after what The Avengers did
-Rhodey debuts as Iron Patriot while all this is going on as well. The American government was sitting on the War Machine armor for a while and decided to make it more patriotic as Rhodey is going to escort the President to a meeting in China.
-While on Air Force One, The Mandarin's forces attack in order to kill the president and take down the American government, but his plan is foiled by Tony and Rhodey teaming up.
-Afterwards, Maya seeks out Tony's help, telling him that her partner sold their idea to the Mandarin which will result in a bunch of cyborg people for The Mandarin to control.
-As a response to this and the AF1 incident, the Mandarin blows up Tony's malibu home, kidnaps Pepper, and Tony gets trapped under water and resurfaces in the middle of nowhere.
-Back to where he was in the first IM movie, the only thing Tony has to rely on is his brain while lugging around a dead suit of armor. Whatever he figures out leads to him controlling the 40 armors at the end of the movie.
-The most ambiguous part of the film is the third act, we have almost nothing to go on for this other than that the final battle is Tony's 47 armors vs The Mandarin's extremis forces and a Chinese theater gets blow up...so I'll just leave it at that.
-Now, here's the really interesting part. Throughout the film, Tony is dealing with the trauma he suffered during the Avengers and that time stranded helps him clear out his head. He realizes that while he was truly frightened by what he saw in space, he also finds himself fascinated and drawn towards the idea of the open universe. This compels him to try and go out into space for a while as a way to get away from all the things that transpired on Earth in The Avengers and IM3, as well as a way to tacle his fears head on.
-While out there, it's shown in the after-credits scene that Tony picks up a distress signal and comes into contact with one of Thanos/The Chitauri's ships, setting up what could be an after-credits scene in GotG.